Posted:
When we all heard that a new director was coming, we were all happy, hoping that some choppiness of scenes will be addressed, proper focus will be paid on closing of scenes as well as honing on emotions of characters in key scenes.
Rati and Direction + Editing = Failure to show fast gambit of emotions cycling thru her repetitively, making her more frantic with each cycle
Director
This director is taking the show backwards, not forwards. One pet peeve of mine is how the audience is shown that this is an important scene. What the director forgets is that audience is intelligent. Music and dialogues, emotions of characters are enough to get the meaning. In these situations less is more.
But the director seems to believe the opposite. His favorite technique is to zoom in and out of a charcater's face, then give some white space and then zoom in on another characater's face with some "dahma-kedar" music. This is so stupid😡 It ruins the scenes. He has done this many times. Even today, he used it when the family is getting impatient waiting for Rishi, as well as crucial scene where the family comes to know that Rishi is missing and Indira is going to wait for him.
These scenes were so key and the drama was all lost in the OTT editing as well as poor direction for actors. We get that the family is impatient for Rishi to show up. But we do not need the damakedar zoom in followed by blank screen and then zoom in on another character followed by white space etc.
Actors blank faces - no frantic anxiety
- Of all the actors portraying SF, I only found Sandeep the best today. Even when his face was blank, by the expression in his eyes, one can tell what is cooking in his brain. But the rest were complete duds. Expressionless, no surprise, anxiety, shock, curiosity ... Where could Rishi have gone?
- Most of all Kapil Soni has been a big disappointment. He was excellent when Vidith was ill and could not speak. But now, he can, his face is all blank and eyes are dead. this has been the case in all past scenes where he had a role to play.
- Same with the actor who plays her father. He acted so well in the past, like when Rishi caught him with the necklace etc. Today, he just was dumb with that stock face where mouth is all open and face is blank.
Rati did a good job, but disappointed me towards the end. One of Rati's great strength is the ability to use her excellent voice as an instrument to convey Indira's emotions. From a stunted little girl scared of love ...to... hitlergiri - her voice is her key instrument.
Today we needed to see disbelief, extreme anxiety, fear chasing frantically across her face as well as in her voice and her actions. We needed to see her heart in her throat. We needed to se her gulping her fear down
I was disappointed that we did not see that. We as audience know that Indira is experiencing all this. But we needed to see it too. Rati is capable of this. We saw a glimpse of this when Ishaan was missing.
I do not know whether it is the case of poor acting, or poor direction as well as editing.
Also jarring was when Munnabhai is taunting her saying that Rishi has left her. Normal Indira (i.e. Hitler) is such a focussed girl that in this situation, all her attention would have been focussed on looking in all directions, eyes frantically searching for Rishi. She would not even have heard his taunt and when pressed for attention would have swatted him away with barely a second's worth of attention.
But this Indira ( and I suspect it is the director's messy direction) had time and braincells to entertain their question, hear them patiently and then tell them to go. Hitler would not have wasted those precious seconds entertaining inane questions.
The editing of the scenes, especially closeups also did not convey that frantic feeling.
Rati nails most of Indira's scenes. But this is the first time I felt a disconnect between what was shown and what I should feel.
